


Interweave

by karanguni



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Light Dom/sub, M/M, Rope Bondage, Yuleporn, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:21:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21790012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: Keita finds an occasion to make life imitatecreativeart.
Relationships: Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Interweave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [st_aurafina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/gifts).



A package arrived in the post one morning for Keita, a quite large box neatly wrapped and postmarked from Japan.

'Were you expecting something?' Thaniel asked him as he brought the box into the workshop. 'You normally get most of your bits from England.'

Keita was absorbed doing something very specific to a set of cogs that he had laid out on his work table. 'That's not for clockmaking,' he said without bothering to look up. 'Put it upstairs in the bedroom.'

'The bedroom?'

'I'll deal with it later,' Keita said, impatient because he was working. The modifications he was making were so small that Thaniel could barely see his hands moving.

There was a noise at the door and a moment later half of Six was inside the workshop. 'Six wants breakfast,' she demanded.

'Six wants to stop disturbing Keita and go to school,' Keita corrected. 'Get her out of here, Thaniel, I'm banishing you both.'

'What is school?' Six asked Thaniel as she was ushered away and into the kitchen. It was going to be her first day, and she looked criminally innocent washed and scrubbed and stuffed into a school frock. Keita, after a very glazed look during the brief discussion they'd had about Six's education, had agreed very sensibly to send her to a School Board school instead of attempting anything else for the moment.

('She's still feral,' he'd pointed out. 'She can cut her teeth on the other children until she's respectable enough for proper tutoring.'

'She's barely five and between the two of you she's become fairly good at pretending she's five years behind what she's capable of.'

'Being clever gets you into trouble,' Keita'd declared. 'She's smart enough to understand that much, even if she's equally as annoying.')

'I think Keita would say it's exactly like the factory. You spend all day listening to people tell you what to do,' he told her, getting the kettle going.

Six made a face.

'The difference being,' Thaniel went on, 'you are sitting down the entire time and come back for two hours of lunch.'

Six made a _suspicious_ face. Thaniel had the equally strong suspicion that, by the end of the month, either Six or Keita was going to find the school intolerable, barring any pre-emptive expulsions or escapes or Keita losing his patience at what she was going to be taught.

There was some porridge and fish for breakfast. It was still early, but Six still rose at dawn ready for a life of either forced labour or crime. Keita had Six on something close to permanent loan so that she still had board elsewhere in the evenings; they didn't have the space for her at Filigree Street yet. She showed up every morning for breakfast and was beginning to develop the tastes of a queen of urchins. It meant that home, when Thaniel left it in the morning and when he came back in the evenings, was always filled with the noise of a household ticking along.

* * *

The house was calm when Thaniel returned that evening. Keita was at the low table in front of the hearth, absorbing heat from it like a lizard with a blanket over his lap. He was reading a book.

'Six?' Thaniel asked. There was a second cushion on the floor next to Keita which looked recently used.

'You just missed her. She's shed her earthly disguise and gone back to hell to visit other demons,' Keita said, languorous. Thaniel now noticed abandoned pieces of frock decorating the furniture. 'Her handwriting is atrocious, did you know?'

'It's a good thing she's learning to write at all.'

'She's planning on stealing the factory ledgers and using her newfound literacy to plan an insurrection.'

Thaniel wasn't sure if he needed to be concern. Keita looked up at him with solemn eyes. 'She hasn't descended into complete anarchy yet, but I'm debating whether arson should be in her future.'

'Please don't let her burn London to the ground,' Thaniel said, coming over and claiming her seat. 'Hello.'

'Hello,' Keita said to him, beaming. It made him look incredibly young again. He was starting to unleash that kind of smile on Thaniel like a weapon when they were properly alone.

Thaniel didn't bother to wonder whether it was because it made it hard for him not to give into the urge to lean forward to kiss Keita. The urge was never in question in his mind, after all.

Thaniel pulled back after pressing his forehead to Keita's for a moment.

'There's dinner left on the counter,' Keita told him before he could ask. 'Fanshaw threw a fit at the latest imports seized by the F.O., did he?'

'How am I supposed to keep state secrets out of your head, again?' Thaniel asked, kneeling to get up for his dinner.

'Don't bring them home with you,' Keita told him promptly, nodding at the paper wrapped prints that Thaniel had brought back with him. 'Also, those aren't state secrets. Though I'm not sure I'd call them art, either.'

'Fanshaw wanted me to get your expert opinion on exactly that. Whether they count as art or as pornography.' Thaniel tried to shrug it off, but he knew he was blushing up above his collar. When the pictures had arrived at the office they had to be hastily covered up again. They were supposed to have been sent to a collector somewhere in the city, but had been snatched up by some port officials who had somehow got a glimpse of what the pictures were. He took up his fork and spoon and started in on his meal, a combination of rice and some sides that Keita had made. 'He said it was one thing to destroy cheap smut and another thing to destroy jolly expensive smut that you could legitimately charge import taxes on.'

'Ha!' Keita laughed. 'Reminds me of someone I used to know.'

'Hm?'

'India Office,' Keita shook his head dismissively. He went and retrieved the package. 'May I?' he asked. Thaniel nodded, and he carefully undid the string holding the paper wrapping on. He pulled out two prints. 'I thought so.'

'Real?' Thaniel asked. 'Better than your depressed Dutchman?' He kept sneaking looks at the pieces, then looking away.

'Woodblock prints, being prints, are less rare by definition and will stay that way,' Keita mused, inspecting the first print more closely. 'But the artist responsible for these won't fade into obscurity, if that's what you are asking. He won't be as famous as some, but the provocative don't necessarily need to be to sell copies.'

Thaniel nodded. 'That's good. I'll tell Fanshaw not to have them trashed for obscenity, then.' The first print had an imprint that marked it as the first in a series of thirty-two customs and manners of beautiful women. Thaniel wondered whether all the other thirty-one prints contained depictions of equally undressed ladies.

'They're not all what you would consider compromising,' Keita said to his thought. 'This one's just one of the more scintillating ones. And then there's this...' He took out the second print, which was titled something along the lines of _Lives of Modern People_ by Thaniel's translation. It depicted a woman in beautiful dress with her head tilted to the side, hair somewhat undone and eyes heavy-lidded with some expression of rapture. She was entirely dressed, but there was a rope bound around her neck and across her chest, but it did not make her look distressed. Far from.

Thaniel coughed. 'Is there a name for it? The rope binding.'

Keita shook his head. 'The techniques are adapted from an old book on how to torture prisoners of war, if you're asking a technical question. But for _that_ ,' he nodded at the picture, which looked very far from torture, 'no. Not at the moment, there isn't. There will be, probably. Almost certainly. The future is less repressive, though that isn't hard considering you Englishmen and your squeamishness.'

'I apologise on behalf of all my people,' Thaniel said.

'Don't,' Keita said, looking straight at him. 'It's a habit that can be worked on.'

'Meaning?' Thaniel asked, but his mouth was dry. He didn't know what he was thinking. He wasn't sure what Keita was seeing unfold, because Thaniel didn't know how _he_ felt about what was being implied. Somewhere there, sandwiched between mild disbelief and more serious trepidation, though, was desire.

Keita shrugged. 'Meaning you can either take your time with dinner, or you could finish up and we could go upstairs and take a look at that package, now that the house is free of young human vermin.'

Thaniel pushed his bowl away. Keita extended a hand, and he took it as he got up. Keita didn't let go as they took the stairs up, and Thaniel fingers felt cold against the warmth of his touch.

* * *

They didn't always sleep together. Keita radiated need for company like a silent siren, but now that he had it Thaniel felt reasonably sure that Keita didn't know what, precisely, to _do_ with it. He was a man who, as far as Thaniel knew, had scrupulously avoided contact for decades. He vacillated reliably, like a pendulum swinging from nights when he wanted contact any way he could have it – a touch of the hand, a press of their shoes together under the table, the both of them naked in bed talking about a performance at the Royal Albert – to evenings when it almost seemed too much for him. On the latter sort of day Thaniel would kiss him on the forehead instead of the mouth and send him to bed alone with a smile. Keita liked that as much as he liked invading Thaniel's baths and scrubbing his shoulders down while waxing on about the idiocy of politics, whenever something from home disturbed him.

When they did end up in bed with one another, Keita was sometimes all playful joy, and other times more like the rest of himself: terrifyingly self-assured and capable of winding Thaniel up like a spring in one of his clocks. It was a search for equilibrium that Thaniel felt mirrored in himself; the both of them were slowly settling down to something wonderful and in tune, but the frequencies of the notes weren't quite settled yet.

They went into the bedroom and, though there wasn't real need, Thaniel locked the door behind them. There was sort of hum in the air, whether real or imagined he didn't know.

Keita took the package Thaniel had left on the dresser and opened it. The box contained several long lengths of rope made of...

'Jute,' Keita answered. 'Not as comfortable as silk, certainly, but the friction means knots hold more easily, which is safer, in some ways. Not always.'

'I trust you to be careful,' Thaniel said, erasing all futures in which Keita did not know how to do this, did not know how to do this _expertly_. If this was what Keita spent evenings looking ahead to, it seemed to make quite a lot of sense that he would want some nights to himself.

Keita picked up one of the ropes. 'You'll tell me,' he said, and it wasn't a request, not precisely. 'If.'

'I'll tell you,' Thaniel promised. 'And you'll listen if I do.'

'Yes,' Keita said, and this time he looked vulnerable when he said it. 'Of course I will.'

'You don't make up my mind for me,' Thaniel reminded him, reaching out and cupping Keita's cheek with one hand. 'You never have, even when you tried to give me enough freedom from you to hang myself on.'

'You change your mind too often,' Keita agreed. 'You're not very probable.' He was steadier now, and pulled Thaniel's hand away to press a kiss to the back of his knuckles. 'Would you like to undress?'

Thaniel thought about it. 'Which is better?'

Keita looked like he was genuinely perplexed by the fact that he hadn't come up with a _yes_ , _no_ , or _I don't know_ , but something else altogether. 'What?'

Thaniel smiled. 'Which version do you remember liking better – the future where I say yes, or the future where I say no? Neither can be terrible or you'd probably not have asked, or at least you'd have pushed me more one way.'

He watched Keita's grip flex on the rope and his eyes go distant. Thaniel squeezed Keita's hand. 'I hope they're pleasant imaginings.'

'Don't be silly,' Keita said distantly, squeezing back. 'What you get up to some mornings by yourself, that's imagination. _This_ is research.'

Thaniel felt him let go of his hand, and then Keita was sliding the rope around his neck, settling it under his collar almost like a tie. He pulled on one end, gently, and let the whole length of the rope slither over the back of Thaniel's neck. By the time it fell to the ground, the hairs on Thaniel's arms were standing on end. The world seemed to be very, very quiet now.

They lapsed into silence. Keita turned both Thaniel's wrists up and undid the cuffs on his sleeves, then rolled them up above his elbows, checking to make sure they were not tight on his skin. He undid the top button of Thaniel's shirt, and then the second, enough to bare his collarbone and to lean in and press dry lips to Thaniel's throat. It made Thaniel's breath catch.

Keita turned Thaniel to face the bare wall. It was a good thing Keita had so little in his room, because it was easy not to bump into anything even in the dark.

'Put your arms behind you,' Keita said, and Thaniel did. The rope came up around one shoulder and then the other, pulling his posture up and open before a knot was made high on his spine. Thaniel tested the restraint; Keita put a hand on the back of his neck and he shuddered and stopped. He felt Keita make another knot lower down his back before the two lengths of rope were looped high around both of his arms, drawing them close. Then another knot down his back. Then another loop around his arms.

Thaniel could trace the pattern in his mind as Keita worked. He was breathing hard, the only sound in the room. Keita stopped halfway to reach around and hold him, and why that made Thaniel sob he didn't know. The feel of Keita's thumb tracing its way down the front of his chest, starting from the base of his throat down to his navel, made Thaniel feel like he'd been disemboweled and set alight and then put together again. He ached: his prick, his bones, his _teeth_. He could only think of the expression on the woman's face in the painting: not vacant, but not present, either – somewhere different, somewhere where the silence felt like music being vibrated into your bones.

Keita got to his wrists and bound those together, too, loop over loop over loop. When he turned Thaniel back around and pushed him down onto his knees, Thaniel felt himself go like his body belonged to another person, one with so much more grace than he had himself. He leaned back on his heels and felt his head touch the wall behind him. He looked up at Keita, feeling the dig of the rope against his collarbone as he did so. Keita's eyes were as deep as wells. Thaniel parted his lips and Keita reached down to stroke his lower lip with the tip of his index finger. Thaniel kissed it and smelled lemon soap, tasted the ghost of machine grease.

He felt Keita touch his right knee with one foot, and widened his stance. Keita repeated the motion with his left knee, adjusting Thaniel until he had him where he liked him, legs spread and back arched against the wall. Thaniel couldn't look away, and Keita held his gaze.

When Keita next touched him, it was to brush his fingers through Thaniel's hair. Thaniel's scalp tingled where Keita stroked it, and Keita repeated the movement time and time again until Thaniel's skin felt too tight, like just that touch was too much. He was quivering from the strain of being exactly _here_.

Keita pulled back. Thaniel let his eyes fall shut when he heard Keita working at his pants. Then there was another touch to his chin, and Thaniel opened his mouth and leaned forward as Keita kept a soft grip on the back of his head. The weight of Keita's prick in his mouth was grounding, was good. Thaniel sucked, gently, then pressed his tongue up the base of the shaft and trailed it down again. He heard Keita make a noise like the white-yellow burn of stars across the sky: subtle, but enormous and everything in his world. Keita guided him by tugging him where he wanted Thaniel to be, and eventually they fell into a rhythm, Keita thrusting into his mouth and Thaniel taking it until his throat ached and his fingers were clenching behind his back. When Keita spilled into his mouth, Thaniel sucked him clean before pulling off. He was panting. Sweat had stuck his shirt to his back.

There was a shuffling and then Keita was kneeling in front of him. He reached over to pull Thaniel forward so that his head was on Keita's left shoulder. Since he was taller, his spine curved in a c-shape that made his shoulderblades wing out and his arms push against the ropes. When Keita ran his fingers down the line of central knots along Thaniel's spine, Thaniel had to muffle a noise against his neck.

'Please,' he whispered into Keita's ear.

'Of course,' Keita murmured in return. He undid Thaniel's trousers and Thaniel sobbed when Keita took him in hand. His voice hitched when Keita stroked him quickly, then lowered down into groans when Keita slowed down to thumb at the head of his prick. 'You'll have to paint this for me,' Keita said.

'What?' Thaniel felt delirious.

'You sound much lovelier than the prints downstairs look,' Keita said. 'You should paint how you sound now for me, and I can hang it up in the –'

Thaniel surged up so that he could kiss Keita and his mouth and the filthy suggestions that came out of him silent. Keita kissed him back, and Thaniel could feel him smiling while Keita's hand sped up on him and pushed him towards completion. He groaned into Keita's mouth as the world vanished into pleasure and the fire-bright pull of the ropes around him. Thaniel came shudderingly hard, shaking even after the aftershocks had passed. He felt Keita kiss his temple and pull him up off his aching knees and onto the bed.

Thaniel lay there in a haze as Keita undid the ropes. The quiet was just as good now, perhaps even better: there was nothing to worry about, nothing to do, nothing discordant. He was only vaguely aware of being undressed and wiped down.

At some point, he felt Keita finish putting things away and then slide in front of him. Thaniel comfortably cinched his arm around his chest and kissed his bare shoulder.

'Tomorrow,' he said, nonsensically.

'Tomorrow?' Keita sounded drowsily content. If he were a cat, Thaniel thought, he would be purring.

'Tomorrow, which one of us is getting up to get those prints put away before Six gets in?'

Keita groaned and shifted in his grip so that they were facing one another. 'Steepleton,' he intoned.

'Mori,' Thaniel responded, just as dire.

They lapsed into quiet laughter. They were both trembling. Thaniel pulled the sheets tighter around them and ran a soothing hand up and down Keita's back.

Thaniel listened, heart full, when Keita eventually pronounced 'Let tomorrow decide,' and relinquished control to the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to rosefox for the beta.


End file.
